


you're projecting (so what if i am)

by shslduelist (joeri)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Drabble, Eating Disorders, Gen, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 04:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16189760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/shslduelist
Summary: takeru finds something he's been looking for.





	you're projecting (so what if i am)

It’s Takeru and two Ignis inside of a food truck and it’s three am. Too many times, Takeru is up at this hour. It’s him and Flame and Ai who are shooting the shit and passing conversation forth and back and Takeru’s stomach is rumbling. This tin can of a housing always reeks of grease, the delectable kind. It smells like a full belly and the right kind of juice settling between your fingers.

“This place really knows how to make you hungry,” Takeru says with knowing.

Flame _doesn’t_ know. Flame doesn’t eat. Flame asks, “Why does Kusanagi run a café truck?”

“Eh? You don’t even know that, Flame?” Ai postures, as if there’s pride to be lost.

Flame bites predictably while Takeru counts little gold flecks in his fingernails, trying to remember the last time he’d held a hamburger tight enough in his hands to leave little impressions in the bun— enough to get a small harvest of sesame seeds planted all over his palms.

“It is not my business what it is that humans do with their spare time. However, if you were to ask me my opinion, I—”

“It’s so he eats,” Takeru interrupts.

Both of the computer algorithms regard him strangely. Who is _he_ ?

“What’s this?” Ai asks.

“I was just thinking… Kusanagi-san running a food truck here would make sense, since it’d make a lot easier for Yusaku to eat.”

The softest night air of tonight’s Den City creeps in through the cold metal surrounding them. The same sandmanesque shade and silence spreads itself thin around Takeru’s body and he feels a hollow comfort in knowing that he still has a few complete strangers out there figured out better than his own family. It’s satisfying— the way that Flame and Ai glance back at one another with a look of fixed puzzlement.

Takeru turns over onto his side, shivering when his ankles brush against the icy floor. Recalling that room from ten years before, his legs curl beneath the blanket allotted to him anxiously.

“Ten years ago, Yusaku and I could not eat before we’d dueled for it. If we performed bad enough, we might not see any meal come to us. If you lost a bunch of times in a row… you might not see a meal for a day or more. Depends on how well you played.”

Even on Flame and Ai’s pixelated expressions, sadness found itself etched upon its surfaces not much unlike humans showing sympathy of their own. When Takeru squints at Flame in the dark, standing atop his duel disk and hovering mere inches from his face, he forgets that they’re supposed to be harbingers of the end and all that.

His stomach growls, and with it comes a familiar panic in his system that subsides momentarily— leftover scars, habits, reminders of it all.

This too, the way that Takeru chews on the end of his thumb when he’s growing a bit peckish. _Focus on it. Focus on this pain._

_If you can’t handle this, you can’t handle the shocks again. Don’t pick the headset back up unless you’re sure you can win._

Of course, it wasn’t a singular punishment, deprivation and starvation or electrocution. Children shouldn’t have to make rational decisions on which to receive. Takeru shouldn’t have chewed his fingers to pieces. Kusanagi and Yusaku shouldn’t have gone on that errand in the dead of night and left him to his own devices, Takeru thinks. In just a few short minutes, he feels a haze creep in on him.

The scent of the fryers feels like a punch to the gut. Licking his lips, Takeru grins queasily.

“It makes sense that you’d come away from that with an eating disorder or two.”

Takeru wonders if they can tell that he’s speaking from experience. His arms circle in around his midsection.

“You come away with… a sense that you don’t deserve these basic tenets of human existence unless you bleed for it— unless you fight for it— unless you _deserve_ it.”

Betraying the mood, Ai speaks up brightly.

“So you’re saying that Kusanagi-san runs a food business because Yusaku has an eating problem?”

Flame turns an inch toward Ai.

“Ai, try to use some sensitivity. Be more coy with your questioning.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Takeru mumbles. “Maybe Kusanagi-san had the truck before meeting Yusaku but… it would definitely help, I think. It’d help to be surrounded by someone that makes you eat,” he says.

A girl comes to mind. Maybe his only friend. Maybe Kiku.

“Think it’d help to be around someone who checks in on you in that way, and makes it readily available, you know.”

Ai is scratching the back of his head while Flame crosses his legs, flattening his behind against the top of Takeru’s duel disk. His eyes, glowing a bright amber, peer through to Takeru’s inside. Takeru kind of thinks his voice sounds deeper, more full in sound. It bounces pleasantly around the inner walls of his skull and doesn’t leave him empty.

“Do you think having that would help you?” he asks, and Takeru’s jaw locks.

When Takeru peers up from his nails to find Flame gauging him for a reply, he gives a shallow nod.

It’s Takeru and two Ignis in a food truck, and it’s just another first of so many first steps— realizing what you need and how to ask for it from the people who want to help you.

**Author's Note:**

> i want these boys to heal... im rly sleepy and havent beta'd this at all we die like men.


End file.
